Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Blogs do not exist in isolation but are interlinked. Each active blog is
connected to thousands of other websites and the more linked a blog is, the
higher its chances of popularity and activity. This interconnectivity also ena-
bles the identification of the most active and densely populated parts of the
blogosphere, which aids in tracking the most popular topics of data exchange
on the blogs, for corporate use.
The practices in traditional Internet marketing, particularly among luxury
brands, has been information dissemination in a vertical format, while blogs
provide a lateral form of communications in an interconnected mode. The
blogosphere is, however, different as is seen from Figure 3.8, which provides
a snapshot view of the blogosphere in a geographical region. It gives an idea
of the multiplicity of the nodes and outlinks of the connectivity in the blogo-
sphere and confirms that the blogosphere is distinct from the cyberspace. The
size of the nodes represents the number of inlinks to a blog and the colors rep-
resent the URL or the hosting of the blogs. Blogs hosted at the same domain
have the same color. What this substantiates is the density of the interconnec-
tivity of blogs and also that geographical location and domain hosting types
of blogs are unlikely to affect the ability to link to other blogs. It is also inter-
esting to note that the nodes of the largest sizes are found in the most concen-
trated areas of the diagram.
Figure 3.8
A snapshot of the blogosphere's nodes, indicating the density and
interconnectivity of blogs in cyberspace
Source
: Image courtesy of Datamining: datamining.typepad.com
As the blogosphere grows in size and scale, its level of influence will increase
and its scope of activities will encroach more and more within mainstream web-
sites. This is already happening, as can be seen in several media, professional,
